Pretending for real (working title)

Pretending for real (working title)

Pretending for real (working title) explores the undisclosed aspects of public art through an immersive installation combining models, mock-ups, fictional archives, and scripted performances. The exhibition reveals—and allows visitors to experience—the inner workings of a system that is as standardized as it is mysterious: that of model presentations before juries in the context of public art competitions in Quebec. For nearly ten years, La Famille Plouffe has been designing public artworks integrated into locations and communities throughout Quebec. However, for each work realized, several proposals, often ambitious and intimately linked to their context, remain invisible. This exhibition acts as a living archaeology of these rejected projects: they are reconstructed, remixed, exaggerated—as if to offer them another form of existence, even if only under the spotlight of a “shadow theater.” In an atmosphere of performative docufiction and augmented vernacular, the exhibition is structured like an enlarged model of a model presentation, with all the ritual elements of the genre: projected 3D models, material samples, printed documents (preamble, inspirations, maintenance estimates, schedule, etc.), physical models, audio excerpts from interviews, and 3D-printed witness characters.